Frontier VR Developers -> REACT ! SIMPLE fix to double our effective solution. WHY ?!

[Lirezh]

No Letsteenio.
I am a customer, I bought the game, I expect a bug to be fixed.
DK2 is a commercially availabel device which can be ordered online by anyone and ED officially supports it.
So I will not go or do anything, I will report bugs I find to have them fixed.
That's what everyone should do who finds a bug, well I guess only developers know that

 

[Milamber]

This is a great post and needs a thumbs up! I also find the text hard to read, but I doubt the DEVS are going to implement it.

 

[Kroenen]

No Letsteenio.
I am a customer, I bought the game, I expect a bug to be fixed.
DK2 is a commercially availabel device which can be ordered online by anyone and ED officially supports it.
So I will not go or do anything, I will report bugs I find to have them fixed.
That's what everyone should do who finds a bug, well I guess only developers know that

The bit you're missing is....this is NOT A BUG! It's a limitation/feature of the screens used in the DK2. What you're 'demanding' is that the devs drop everything and focus on implementing a green biased text change to compensate for a limitation in DEVELOPMENT HARDWARE which is not consumer ready. A change which in your original post you described as 'easy'. Perhaps if you list the lines of code that need changed, with the appropriate changes highlighted, then all a dev needs to do is copy paste from your post.

Oh wait....you don't know the lines of code? I see....well you couldn't possibly know if it was easy or not then. Perhaps you should stop making assumptions about how easy or necessary a task this is?

As much as the text is tricky to read (although not as bad as you make out in your most recent image), this is far and away from being a priority. There are still plenty of legitimate bugs to squash, and not to mention trading being pretty borked right now.

TLR - Devs are well aware of this and will implement a fix when it's ready....but it will never be 'acceptable' until CV1 is released.

 

[Ref Minor]

At least the DK2-Moneypigs have decent Rift-Support while many, many "real" Developers can't even afford buying the "development kit".
Also, there are other 3D-implementations that currently deserve higher priority attention.

I spent £280 on my DK2, if that is the limit for being a "Moneypig" then pretty much anyone with a smartphone or a basic laptop is one too.

Do try to avoid the insulting hyperbole, there's a good chap.

 

[RobinsonUK]

What you're 'demanding' is that the devs drop everything and focus on implementing a green biased text change to compensate for a limitation in DEVELOPMENT HARDWARE which is not consumer ready. A change which in your original post you described as 'easy'. Perhaps if you list the lines of code that need changed, with the appropriate changes highlighted, then all a dev needs to do is copy paste from your post.

There's a strong business case for doing it, particularly as right now Elite Dangerous is the best game you can buy that's Rift enabled, with the overall experience being one of eye strain and discomfort caused by a very text centric game having unreadable text. Right now you can change the HUD to pure green, which I did yesterday for the first time. The difference is unbelievable. Text I used to strain to read is now legible and the experience has improved x 10. It's not even a lot of work on a technical level. I wouldn't ask for UI to make the change. I'm quite happy to modify the graphics xml file.

The only thing that needs to be done at this point is to separate out a few other items in the display such that they aren't included in whatever post-process gets invoked to apply the colour matrix to the HUD before it gets rendered. Let's say it's 2 weeks work for 1 dev maximum. Once done every single customer who has a Rift will be happy.

Just BTW: I would have trouble classifying this in bugtracker. It's definitely a bug in my opinion, not an enhancement. It's a piece of hardware that's supported sub-optimally. I haven't had this problem in other Rift applications that show text, though I do get nausea from quite a few (especially densely occluded environments with mouse control) and that's definitely a design fault in the Rift itself if not in our own brains.

 

[Lirezh]

Kroenen, as a professional developer I know it's easy to do, compared to all the other things it's likely one of the easiest changes. Obviously I can not point at code lines without having the code, think a little bit.


Once Oculus is supported (and that does not mean CV1, it means DK2) it also means that a faulty implementation in supporting it is classified as a bug and not a "design" or "feature".
I guess that the VR developer is good in 3D and programming but not so good with hardware, that's the main problem for most developers who are not educated in electronics when they suddenly face hardware-close environments.
So most likely he/she was not aware that red or blue colors do not work on Pentile displays and strangely Oculus VR did not tell them yet.
After all Elite is a big selling point Oculus as well, that's a symbiotic multi million dollar income for both companies.

btw Robinson, the nausea with mouse controlled games is often not a problem in the DK2. DK2 does have some design issues but nausea from most mouse controlled games comes from body movement that does not fit to the output of your orientation senses in your ears and arms.
Games like Elite work well because you sit in a cockpit, you have a stable small world around you which is fixed with you and the brain believes it. The cockpit window is similar to watching 3D TV from your couch and cockpit environment gives you the immersion of being in the spaceship.
When you are in a first person game you lack this stable environment and the orientation senses in arms and your ears do play a big role, brain believes it might be poisoned and you become motion sick from it.
I personally believe that VR will >always< cause motion sickness in such games, only if your other senses could be tricked FP motion sickness is not a topic anymore. We are not going to see that in our lifes without having to run and jump.


Right now Elite is, as you said, for sure the #1 game/demo for VR/Oculus. Not a single other demo comes close to that.
Fixing the color bug would likely put Elite Dangerous into many newspapers again, I am sure the money spent (which is minor in that case) would come back thousands fold.
After all the unreadable text was a central point in ALL reviews regarding Oculus+Elite. Fix that part and we will need new reviews, that's a lot of free advertisement.
I just don't get why it's not done already (half a year ago)

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

At least the DK2-Moneypigs have decent Rift-Support while many, many "real" Developers can't even afford buying the "development kit".
Also, there are other 3D-implementations that currently deserve higher priority attention.

wow, bitter much? You make it sound like fans of VR who wanted something to play with now have some how scuppered developers?

Given turn around time on the rift is barely more than a week, this is not the case. As for the priority....... I have no recent stats to back this up, but there was a time when >10% of players were playing on a rift. I am sure now the game is being played by more than just the hardcore elite fans, this number has dropped, the fact is, I know more people who play elite in VR than in any other 3D mode.

I do agree however that given it is something we can change ourselves, it is not a priority compared to other game issues, BUT I believe it probably IS the most popular 3D mode in the game in terms of the most popular 3D mode which people solely use. (IME people may dip into 3D on a PC to check it out for 10 mins, before going back to 2D, where as people who game on a rift tend to find that they will never again want to play elite in 2D so the rift becomes the sole method of play)

 

[Voyager_NL]

As much as I can agree that the choice of color is not optimal for DK2. (I am not a rift owner yet but experienced a Dk2 for about an hour and I am still in awe of the immersion of it all.) Has anyone considered that this hardware limitation (pentile display) _might_ not be a problem in future oculus devices. I mean: does anyone know what kind of display was exactly featured in the Crescent Bay version. (They kept that very much under wraps so my guess is not really). And we will know even less about what will be in the first consumer edition.
IF Frontier know anything about this and have a better insight in to what the future holds with these kinds of displays they probably have a better understanding of how to attack this issue and if the proposed changes by the OP are worthwhile to implement at this moment.

 

[RobinsonUK]

As much as I can agree that the choice of color is not optimal for DK2. (I am not a rift owner yet but experienced a Dk2 for about an hour and I am still in awe of the immersion of it all.) Has anyone considered that this hardware limitation (pentile display) _might_ not be a problem in future oculus devices. I mean: does anyone know what kind of display was exactly featured in the Crescent Bay version. (They kept that very much under wraps so my guess is not really). And we will know even less about what will be in the first consumer edition.
IF Frontier know anything about this and have a better insight in to what the future holds with these kinds of displays they probably have a better understanding of how to attack this issue and if the proposed changes by the OP are worthwhile to implement at this moment.

I think the next version has a higher resolution screen and will run at a faster clock rate. The higher resolution will help of course but I doubt Samsung will build a plant just to manufacture screens for the Oculus. Their existing technology covers a market of hundreds of millions of mobile phones. But anyway even if you have 10,000 customers using a Rift DK2, it's still worth putting the fix in for those 10,000. If you only had a couple of hundred it would be a different matter. I'm sure there's a guy counting the beans at Frontier who knows what hardware people are running.

 

[bitstorm]

That's crazy. Presumably this is due to some aspect of the Rift? If so is this likely to be fixed in the consumer edition?

 

[Milamber]

I guess the question is; if this green text makes the game significantly easier to play, and makes the user experience better then why wouldn't the DEV's apply this feature. This post has been top of the forum for a while now so they have definitely read it, lets hope they listen to the community and give us the option to adjust color for DK2

 

[Ramjet]

I have a Dk2 and find that green is good but I am using a combo of green/blue which works nicely together with DSR @ 1440p

There is no need to demand the Devs drop everything and do this right now in the urgent tone the OP suggests ... just let them get to this in the natural order of priority for changes or fixes ... it really is not a huge deal imho as the temporary solution of editing the .xml is ok for now.

So anyway Padwan ... be patient as all is well in the Force !

 

[bmad]

I have to say going green was a real help in the Rift. However it is not always useful especially if you mix playing on a monitor and the Rift. I've copied below the text for a small batch file that automatically changes the GUI colour before you start elite. Please note I have shamelessly ripped this text from another commander who created the batch file originally to change graphic options quickly between a monitor and rift. Worse still I don't know his/her name! But I'm sure they won't mind. LOL.

To use it first go to C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\FORC-FDEV-D-1001. There you will find the GraphicsConfiguration.xml file. Copy that file three times and rename one to GraphicsConfigurationGreen.xml , another to GraphicsConfigurationBlue.xml and the other to GraphicsConfigurationStd.xml. (You can also make more copies of the file for different colours but will have to add more options to the batch file.)

In the newly created blue/green xml files, edit the red, green and blue matrix values to whatever you want. The Std file is the same as the original file. ie, orange.

COpy the text below into a new notepad file. Replace <user> with your user name. Save the file to your desktop as EDGuiColour.bat or whatever you want!

If like me you are really lazy just follow the link and the batch file is there along with a nice green and blue GUI. Std is the normal orange. You need this file in the folder regardless.

Oh and pressing X to exit doesn't seem to work. No idea why. Like I said I did not write this batch file!!

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/z9vzwjdsrwz9my1/AADNWXGoIL3U_1k3JS6BSmOwa?dl=0

Then just run it and choose a number!

------------------------------------------------

@echo off

REM MENU
:menu
cls

echo SELECT GRAPHICS
echo.
echo 1. Green
echo 2. Blue
echo 3. Standard
echo.
echo X. Exit
echo.

choice /c 123x /m "Option"

IF ERRORLEVEL==255 GOTO MENU
IF ERRORLEVEL==6 GOTO QUIT
IF ERRORLEVEL==3 GOTO OPT3
IF ERRORLEVEL==2 GOTO OPT2
IF ERRORLEVEL==1 GOTO OPT1
GOTO MENU

REM OPTION1 (Green)
:OPT1
cd "C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\FORC-FDEV-D-1001"
echo Y | copy /-y GraphicsConfigurationGreen.xml GraphicsConfiguration.xml
goto menu

REM OPTION2 (Blue)
:OPT2
cd "C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\FORC-FDEV-D-1001"
echo Y | copy /-y GraphicsConfigurationBlue.xml GraphicsConfiguration.xml
goto menu

REM OPTION3 (Standard)
:OPT3
cd "C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\FORC-FDEV-D-1001"
echo Y | copy /-y GraphicsConfigurationStd.xml GraphicsConfiguration.xml
goto menu

REM QUIT
:QUIT
exit

 

[Lestenio]

I guess the question is; if this green text makes the game significantly easier to play, and makes the user experience better then why wouldn't the DEV's apply this feature. This post has been top of the forum for a while now so they have definitely read it, lets hope they listen to the community and give us the option to adjust color for DK2

Simply because it's not as easy at the OP suggests.
in the thread relating to the xml edit, a dev posted to say that it is not a simple change. I'm sure they will get to it, but rift support is an experiential feature.

 

[Graywolfe]

I guess the question is; if this green text makes the game significantly easier to play, and makes the user experience better then why wouldn't the DEV's apply this feature. This post has been top of the forum for a while now so they have definitely read it, lets hope they listen to the community and give us the option to adjust color for DK2

I would really, really hate to have a green UI forced on me because someone else thinks it's better. So if any change like this were to come in to really should be a user settable thing which would require a bit more work than the devs just changing a few numbers.

I actually really like the orange look and wouldn't want to change it. For me at least it part of the whole look of Elite Dangerous and I find the screenshots and videos from people who have altered their colours somewhat jarring. Just my view on that though. I can understand why some people, not just Rift users, might want to alter the colours.

 

[SnuggleViking]

I've had a hard time finding any shots of the HUD with the color altered, save for a single mockup image -- where by "hard time" I mean "unqualified failure." I'm curious: Does changing the HUD color change the color of the dashboard? It doesn't seem like changing the HUD brightness changes it, for instance, and I get the impression that the glow on the dashboard is actually a part of the dashboard texture. If I'm right, then there is some serious immersion ruination for me. What about you?

 

[Lirezh]

Graywolfe:
If you are using a DK2 then the red text is nearly unreadable, it's hardly recognizeable as text. So how could you favor that?
If you run without a DK2 the change would not affect you, no one asked for a general design change it's only about Oculus.
Green text and green accents have to be default for any DK2 hardware, I'd not mind if it can be turned off but who would really do that ?
Green color gives you twice the effective resolution, green without red and blue mixed in will additionally remove the pixel disortion.
So switching to green essentially gives you a resolution close to the new prototype without changing hardware.
Orange to Green can be compared to switching from RIFT to DK2 in terms of additional quality.
So it's not "someone else" thinking it's better. It is MUCH MUCH better and it is not thinking, it's a fact that comes from the hardware in use.


@Lestenio:
Where do you have the information from?
I bought the game and it says it supports Oculus.
I read the FAQ on the website and it says Oculus DK2 can be activated in the settings and which resolution to choose.
Not in a single part of the game or website I could find the description "experimental". You made that term up, right ?
Elite officially supports Oculus and if you say this is not true, give me a link to the product description that backs you.

 

[Graywolfe]

Graywolfe:
Are you using a DK2 ?

Yes.

If you are using a DK2 then the red text is unreadable, it's hardly recognizeable as text. So how could you favor that?

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree here. Is it perfect? No. But it is far from unreadable. If you are having that much of an issue you might want to double-check how you have things setup, because this isn't the case for all of us.

If you run without a DK2 the change would not affect you.
Green text and green accents would need to be default for any DK2 hardware, I'd not mind if it can be turned off but who would do that ?

Again, I have to disagree. I'm quite happy with the orange. Why force your choice on me when it just isn't needed?

Green color gives you twice the effective resolution, green without red and blue mixed in will additionally remove the pixel disortion.
So switching to green essentially gives you a resolution close to the new prototype without changing hardware.
Orange to Green can be compared to switching from RIFT to DK2 in terms of additional quality.

To be honest I think people get far too hung up on the resolution of the DK2. Stop looking for it, relax and just enjoy things! At least, that works for me =)

 

[Myrmidon]

I really think you underestimate the sales and attention Oculus and DK2 have generated for Frontier. Its still (one of ) the best aplications avaible for 70k+ DK2 usuers, and I would argue that the majority of us have the game by now.

So its obvious that they prioritize VR developement for the game. I dont know what sales numbers are true for ED but i dont think "tiny" in the right word to describe DK2 user base.

This. I'm an example of someone who long ago stated, "AAA-games? Feh, I'm over all that. I don't game much anymore anyway... What's this? The "best VR experience" you say? Hm.. Sign me up!

Edit to add: Graywolfe is spot on: Ther DK2 isn't perfect, but it is AWESOME, nonetheless. The consumer version will be much better still, but that a ways off yet, & I'm happy with what I've got for now. In a year or so, when it comes out, I'll be investing in a whole new tower system, but today I'm flying in space.

 

[Lirezh]

Graywolfe, it's really not a choice or opinion.
I am very surprised from your sentences, however there is not much to discuss about it.

The hardware of the DK2 delivers twice the resolution and no pixel positioning errors when green is used.
Of course it is free to you to prefer a heavily superior image quality, however I can say for sure that the large majority of the DK2 users would be VERY happy to get the color changes.
Simply because it changes ED from a "nice demo" to a "nice game", with the current colors and without matrix mod it's more a demo than a game on VR.

Did you even try it in green? I posted examples on the first page of this thread. Do yourself a favor and move the browser with the examples over to your extended desktop of the DK2.
Then look at the difference, you can even make the text smaller and green stays readable while red completely fades away.
You are welcome to prefer another color still but you will have to recognize more than twice the "accuracy" you receive from the change. (twice resolution, no pixel distortion).

This is not something to oppose, if you like VR and would like to see good implementations then you need to support movements that aim to teach developers how to design for VR.
The orage color used is a perfect example of development without enough knowledge about the hardware in use.
With the right knowledge at the right people they would likely have never distributed the game for VR in orange designs. It's like forcing 60 fps vsync and then adding oculus support, it will not work out.


Aside that, it is very likely that even the CV1 will have an oled display in pentile matrix. Samsung is the #1 display producer and all of Samsungs flagships use Pentile (it's a Samsung technology).
So even if they increase the resolution on CV1, and I am sure they do it.
In such a likely case non green colors will suffer from half the resolution and pixel distortion also on CV1.
A 4k resolution would make the effect small, a 8k resolution would remove the problems.
And 4k as well as 8k will not help us because we do not have the GPU power to render at these resolutions and 110 FPS+.
Even a 3x SLI Nvidia 980GTX will not render that in good quality.
So for quite a long time developers will have to learn about hardware limitations.
Maybe CV2 or CV3 will use a display that was developed for VR but I'm not going to wait for that



I have attached the sample image again, I doubt you will change your mind but you will really have to close both eyes to not see a major difference.